Today's game

Running late, as I had the honor this morning of spending about an hour talking with two executives from the Busan I’Park Soccer Team from South Korea, who were looking to hear about how the Dodgers operate their public relations, broadcasting, marketing, etc. Sometimes it’s easy to forget what a global brand the Dodgers are until things like this open your eyes again.

All-Stars are announced today live on TBS after the Braves game. I’ll post them as soon as I’m allowed to spill the beans.

Everyone is working hard giving it their best, nobody’s laying back. I see no lack of effort. It looks like everybody is giving it 100%. I love the aggressiveness on the basepaths even if it’s based on who the opposing pitcher is(easy to steal on), they must keep up the pressure-even if it’s unsuccessful it’s part of their running game. They shouldn’t make this talent go to waste. FURCAL, PIERRE & MARTIN should always appear like they are going to steal. They sometimes seem a little too anxious or impatient at the plate(too much first ball swinging). We have veterans and we have some young talent which will get better as it is expose to major leage competion. LET’S GO DODGERS

The team plays hard, that is obvious. We get some bad breaks ( eg Martin given out at third when the replay looked like he might have been in ) and we proceed to lose the game, because the Padres are a bit better than we are so we can’t afford the bad breaks when they happen.

Win some, lose some. There’s always the wild card! I will say that I consider the Padres to be a somewhat better team right now, and when Bradley joins them they’ll be even better.

We don’t have pitching to match, the irony of the Dodgers being touted pre-season as having amazing pitching depth, well, sadly, that turned out to be untrue. Kuo is ineffective, Billingsley too, Schmidt is unspeakable, Tomko and Hendrickson washed up ( a whole rotation’s worth of SP’s we can’t use! ) and we’re left scraping the bottom of the barrel. You can indeed never have enough pitching.

We may hope for a trade bringing us a hired arm and costing us a priced prospect, or we can try again next year. Team as it stands will only be swept out of the postseason anyway, so I really hope we do not trade away the future for a postseason sweep this year.

Bills should be progressing to the point where to rate today’s start successful he would need to go at least six full innings and give up no more than three runs. If he can’t do that in his third starting appearance, he should probably go back to his relief role or go back to Vegas for more seasoning as a starter – maybe 4 or 5 starts that can show more of a stretch in innings pitched and better control.
Of course, if it shows that he’s not ready to maintain that starter role here with the Dodgers, we’ll need to look to make a trade for another starter.

Absolutely not, but with the pitching woes lately, some people are too impatient. Anybody who watches Bills knows how good his stuff is, his approach has been drastically different since returning to the rotation. Also, in regards to this team in the playoffs. You pitch a 4 man rotation, Penny, Lowe, Wolf and Billingsley. Now, if we acquire another starter Billingsley would move back to the pen in the playoffs, which gives us tremendous depth. Long way to go, just thought I’d throw that out there. No way you can give up on a 23 year old stud with the stuff he has after two starts.

San Diego’s lineup is a total joke this afternoon, Cruz, M. Giles, Gonzalez, Cameron, Barrett, Branyan, Blum, Bocachica, Germano. Bills won’t have an easier lineup to pitch to all season. That’s just a fact. Nobody is batting over .275.

i think Bills is at the point where he won’t be on a pitch count. I think telling him he’s on a pitch count was a horrible mistake. He tries hard enough to be perfect so telling him he only has 70 pitches to help us win you can’t tell me that didn’t add more to his problem. I think Bills will be fine today and for the rest of the year. We win today.

Why? With a 5 run lead, your starting pitcher is dealing and has only thrown 88 pitches, a game against John Smoltz tomorrow; why do you take our Bills and bring in Broxton your bullpen ace (not named Saito)? Its a very hot day, Broxton is very big and pitched last night, and is gonna be dead tired after this appearance. Can anyone explain Grady’s logic?

yeah that…and he doesn’t want to blow the lead to an important game, bills still may not have all the endurance necessary to go more and the last thing we need is for him to get hurt cuz he’s too tired…stop complaining people

Just got on the audio I hope I don’t jinx them. I’ve been trying to get on MLBTV but to no avail. It usually takes about a 1/2 hour to come up. tomorrow I will switch back to Time Warner Cable’s Sports in Demand’s EXTRA INNINGS and after that starts I will cancel MLBTV.

Shutout the Padres, that felt really good. Back to within a game, heck of a game by Bills. Perhaps the best start so far in his young career. Love the aggressive running and combine that with clutch base hits, a very satisfying victory. Still waiting on reserves and pitchers…

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